Selman Akbulut

Abstract

In 1987 S Cappell and J Shaneson constructed an
s–cobordism
H from the quaternionic
3–manifold Q to itself,
and asked whether H
or any of its covers are trivial product cobordism? In this paper we study
H,
and in particular show that its 8–fold cover is the product cobordism from
S3 to itself. We reduce
the triviality of H
to a question about the 3–twist spun trefoil knot in
S4, and
also relate this to a question about a Fintushel–Stern knot surgery.